I hope this isn't how its going to go, but...
Self is having a little manning-up show down with Big Luke and Bragg. He's saying, "Look, guys, I don't care about you're pain. You're playing through and that's all there is to it. And your minutes and starting depend on how well you play, even when you are injured. See?"
In the weird, wonderful world of Bill Self not one but three guards our rebounded our Deuce and 3 Quarter Footer. THINK ABOUT THAT!!!! HAS THAT EVER HAPPENED IN THE HISTORY OF COLLEGE BASKET BALL? Frankly, Vick, Mason, and Graham outbounded every KU big man but Bragg and Frank even tied him.
Real big men, the kind that are territorial like lions, you know, the kind that walk around the paint snorting and cursing with eyes flashing and muttering "the paint is mine, don't even think about coming in here," those kind of big men, the kind KU used to have, well, those kind of big men would call a meeting for front court players at some bulk restaurant with an all you can eat and drink buffet and grab a circular booth in the back in the dark and begin talkin' in big, deep Barry White Muther@#$%^ing voices about putting the little pip squeak boys on the floor every time they come into OUR BOX. They would be scowling and wolfing prime ribs whole and shooting colt 45s and gettting more and more mule-ly the more hot buttered roles the terrified waiter keeps bringing.
Real big men would be called by their typically formidable mothers and told not to come home again for real cooking until they get their mommas double digit rebounds and bounce a few of those "little boys" off on the way to giant, manly man dunks. Mothers of real big men are nothing to mess with. Hell neither are the fathers. Fathers of real big men would take their sons out on the drive way and back the mofo's down 15 straight times and slap them up side the head 5 times and say, "Don't you EVER humiliate your mother and me like that again. I didn't work unloading those semis in 100 degree heat and zero degree cold for 19 years so you could go out and stink up the floor. Now bring us some boards, or don't come home, ya hear?!!"
Really, I think this group of big men are too much for Bill Self and Norm Roberts to handle. Bill Self and Norm Roberts were girlie men perimeter players in college. They don't think like big men. They don't talk like big men. They don't dress like big men. They don't smile like big men. Big men smile like they are going to eat you for breakfast. They smile like you are one little pip squeak and I'm not going to smash here at the Wheel, but you come in my paint, and I'm going to put a knot on your head the size of a bowling ball, you got that? That's how real big men smile when they are looking down on your lowly ass.
These big men of KU are NOT REAL big men. Not yet. They are tall choir boys with no primitive sense of territoriality.
They are big over weight guards that cannot dribble well.
That is all they are until Self calls their parents in and their mothers and fathers go to work on them.
It isn't going to be pretty.
The press will have to be denied access to what is going to be said.
The shaming is going to ooze out from under the locked door of the lockerroom like blood coming out of the elevator in The Shining.
Everything else has been tried; that much is clear. The guards have talked to them. The coaches have talked to them. Former players have texted them. But none of it has worked.
Its time to call the fathers and mothers in.
Oh, hell, just cut straight to the mothers.
I hate to do it to any young man.
But its time to lock them in their with their mothers and let their mothers do whatever awful thing it is they do to young big men to shame them into playing up to their abilities.
Go ahead. Get on with it!!!
